WHO: For the 30th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than 250,000 people. Other organizations involved in the commemorations are Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore.

WHAT/WHEN/WHERE: The HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATION will begin at 5:30 PM on Wednesday, August 6, 2014 at 33rd & N. Charles Streets. Participants will demonstrate against Johns Hopkins University’s weapons contracts, including research on killer drones, will commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and will remember the nuclear energy disaster at Fukushima, Japan.

At 6:30 PM there will be a march to the Bufano Sculpture Garden on John Hopkins University Homewood campus. Guests, Mr. Toshiyuki Mimaki, Hiroshima Hibakusha, survivor of the atomic bomb, and Ms. Fumie Kakita, Nagasaki second-generation Hibakusha, will elaborate on their experiences with the atomic bombings. At 8 PM, enjoy dinner at Niwana Restaurant, 3 E. 33rd Street, with the Japanese guests.

WHAT/WHEN/WHERE: The NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION takes place on Saturday, August 9, 2014 at Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles Street. It begins at 5 PM with a potluck dinner. At 6:30 PM the Baltimore Labor Chorus will entertain. Meher Hans, a high school student, and Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, will speak. Finally, participants will share through verse, poetry or song why s/he is moved to dissent against nuclear weapons and power and killer drone strikes.
WHY: On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 150,000 people in the immediate blast and fire. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, more than 75,000 people died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. More than 100,000 people died in the days and years ahead, and continue to die, from the radiation poisoning of the first atomic bombings.

The atomic bombing of Nagasaki may have been the most destructive test ever performed by the U.S. government. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a plutonium-based bomb. The atomic monstrosity dropped on Nagasaki had a uranium core. There was no need to drop either bomb, as Japan was defeated. The bombs were the first salvos in the Cold War. The atomic weapons were actually used to show the Soviet Union that the United States added new and powerful weapons to its arsenal. The civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered the consequences.

Today the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen are victims of U.S. killer drone strikes. As many as six U.S. citizens were denied due process and were assassinated by drone strikes.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. It is the greatest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident of 1986. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will continue its work to rid the planet of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs